639: Fastest Growing Canadian Software Company: $200k to $20M in Revenue from 2010 to 2015 with CEO Tobyn Sowden

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

Ceo, Entrepreneurs, Founders, Software, Business, Entrepreneurship, Saas, Startups

4.6 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2017

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tobyn Sowden. He’s the CEO of Redbrick, the second fastest growing software company in Canada and the birthplace of a product called Shift.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – How to Win Friends and Influence People
What CEO do you follow? – N/A
Favorite online tool? — InVision
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I would tell myself technical, all the way”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:39 – Nathan introduces Tobyn to the show
02:00 – Profit Guide named Redbrick as the second fastest software company in Canada, by measuring revenue growth
- 02:25 – Profit Guide measured a whole 5 year period
- 02:30 – Redbrick had $200K revenue in 2010 and $10-20M in 2015
03:00 – Redbrick was launched in 2010
03:15 – Redbrick started from an app distribution perspective
- 03:38 – Redbrick has developed their own tools to track
- 04:20 – Redbrick’s main software is Deskmetrics, which is integrated into Shift
- 04:31 – Deskmetrics currently has 500K active users
05:00 – Not all who downloads are active users
- 05:08 – The number of downloads are tracked
- 05:34 – SDK is a software development kit
05:59 – Deskmetrics provides consulting services
06:06 – Facebook is one of Deskmetrics’ sources for customer acquisition
- 06:40 – Redbrick is currently spending around $30K for Facebook paid acquisition
- 06:54 – Redbrick is working with a team on Facebook and is committed to growing their spending into millions of dollars for growth
07:33 – Tobyn shares the idea of Shift
- 08:07 – Shift had a preview in September and people liked it
- 08:12 – Shift allows you to switch around your Gmail and google accounts
08:51 – Tobyn increased their team size and hired more developers
09:08 – Shift is a SaaS business with $20/year subscription fee
09:31 – Shift primarily uses Facebook for advertising
09:49 – Shift has around 30K installs and 10K active users
10:00 – Shift’s free-to-paid conversion rate is around 4-5%
10:23 – Shift is 3-months old
10:48 – Tobyn needed to decide if they will launch Shift on December 20^th or wait until 2^nd week of January
11:16 – Shift is doing great at the moment and there’s definitely a market for it
11:40 – Tobyn shares why they decided that Shift be a desktop download
- 12:53 – Tobyn wants to avoid integrations that will make Shift look like a browser
13:15 – Redbrick has 3 parts: the app distribution side, Deskmetrics and Shift
- 13:35 – The app distribution side is the major revenue stream
- 13:45 – Tobyn believes that their path is the app distribution side
14:16 – Team size is 37 and they’re based in Victoria BC in Vancouver, Canada
- 14:31 – There are small teams in Poland and Brazil
15:12 – Deskmetrics is primarily a desktop software analytics platform
16:15 – An average customer pays $500 monthly
16:36 – Tobyn was charging per number of users, but they changed it
17:14 – Deskmetrics was launched in 2016
17:45 – Redbrick has a lot of predictive models that they used in terms of CAC
19:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Facebook is one of the best places, at the moment, for paid advertising.
You can always go and develop more products, but recognize when it’s wise to stick to the path you’re already on.
Charging per head can at times restrict your customers from using your product to its fullest potential.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base.
0:09.4	You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have.
0:16.1	I'm now at $20,000 per talk.
0:18.3	Five and six million.
0:19.3	He is hell bent on global domination. We just broke our $100,000 unit sold mark Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination.
0:21.2	We just broke our 100,000 unit soul mark.
0:23.9	And I'm your host, Nathan Latka.
0:28.2	I just finished traveling Southeast Asia for 41 days, and I usually always get sick when I travel.
0:33.7	And quite frankly, eating is difficult for me.
0:35.8	It's hard to find a restaurant.
0:36.8	And I'm spoiled
0:37.5	in austin with my personal chef well i took these little packets with me this time 30 of them
0:42.4	in my carry-on suitcase they kept me totally healthy with 11 different secret ingredients you can see
0:48.5	them at nathanlaka dot com forward slash juice i'll tell you more later on in the show that's nathanlaka
0:53.5	dot com forward slash juice folks many of you reach out later on in the show. That's Nathanlaka.com forward slash juice.
0:56.0	Folks, many of you reach out to me and you say, Nathan, so many guests on your show talk about
0:59.9	the importance of batching. But whenever I try and batch, you tell me this, you go, Nathan, they don't
1:04.3	book back to back times. So you, or they don't show up after they book. It's frustrating. The answer is, guys, you have to use smart tools.
1:16.2	I use a tool called Acuity Scheduling at Nathan Latka.com forward slash schedule. I'll tell you specifically how I use it later on in the episode. This is episode 639. Be sure to tune in tomorrow
1:22.0	morning for episode 640 with Bill Bryce. His company is called Pronto Sign. They've just passed
1:26.8	300 enterprise customers
1:28.2	with 50 to 500,000 annual contract value. That's the average to help manage secure signatures.
	...

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